Scientists Discover New Dinosaur Species1:47

Scientists in Australia have made a massive discovery: A newly identified genus and species of Australian sauropodâa large, plant-eating dinosaur with a long neck and tail are described in a paper in Scientific Reports this week. Photo: Judy Elliott/Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History.

October 21st 2016

a year ago

/display/newscorpaustralia.com/Web/NewsNetwork/Network News/World/

An artist's impression of the Savannasaurus elliottorum. Picture: Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural HistorySource:AFP

A SPECIES of plant-eating dinosaur has been discovered in Australia, prompting researchers to rethink how dinosaurs spread across the globe.

Remains of the huge dinosaur were discovered in the Australian outback by David Elliot who stumbled upon the bones on his sheep station in the central Queensland town of Winton while herding sheep.

The four-legged, six metre tall, long-necked species belongs to group of dinosaurs known as sauropods which includes the similar looking brontosaurus.

The group of dinosaurs is notable for their large size and it’s believed the new breed grew to at least 14 metres from head to tail.

Named Savannasaurus elliottorum after the desert landscape it was found in, the newly discovered dinosaur from the Cretaceous period also belongs to a subset of species known as titanosaurs, thought to have evolved in South America.

It’s one of the most complete Cretaceous sauropod skeletons ever found in Australia.

The fossil discovery was reported Thursday in prestigious journal Scientific Reports and has significant implications for how scientists think dinosaurs migrated around the globe, causing them to speculate its ancestors had trekked across Antarctica some 105 million years ago.

An artist's impression of the Savannasaurus elliottorum. Picture: Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural HistorySource:AFP

The dinosaur dig site in Winton where the bones have been painstakingly unearthed.Source:Supplied

The fossils make up one of the most complete collection ever found in Australia. Picture: Travis Tischler/Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural HistorySource:AFP

The species was reported alongside fossil analysis of another similar but previously described species, known as Diamantinasaurus matildae.

Together the presence of the two dinosaurs (which Palaeontologists nicknamed Wade and Matildain) in Australia has led scientists to reimagine their theory of how they spread across the ancient megacontinent of Gondwana, which joined Australia, Africa, Antarctica and South America.

“Australian dinosaurs have played a rare but controversial role in the debate,” researchers pointed out in the journal report.

Some experts say they arrived far earlier than the Cretaceous period, which ended with a cataclysmic bang some 66 million years ago.

But the new find points to another scenario, said Stephen Poropat, a scientist at Uppsala University in Sweden and lead author of the study.

“We suggest that our sauropods evolved from South American ancestors,” he told AFP.

These would have crossed a land bridge onto Antarctica, skirted its edge, and then crossed another bridge to Australia.

During most of the Cretaceous, Poropat said, the polar continent would have been too cold for these lumbering herbivores to have survived the trip. But a window opened about 105 million years ago, earlier research has shown, warming the region enough to make a southern passage possible.

“Antarctica was not frozen over, as far as we know, at any time” from 251 to 66 million years ago, he said

Mr Elliott, who also happens to be the chairman of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in Queensland, first found the fossils in the 2005.

“I was trying to keep the sheep together on my own on a motorbike and I went straight through these bones,” Mr Elliott told reporters over a decade ago.

“Anything else and I probably wouldn’t have even stopped to have a look, but I jumped off as soon as I could and had a quick look and went ‘Wow’.”

The extraction of the bones was painstaking work and releasing the fossils from clay-rich soil proved difficult.

Researchers have recovered about a quarter of the dinosaur’s fossils, making it one of the most complete dinosaur skeletons ever found in Australia.

— With AFP

Dr Stephen Poropat from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History in Winton, with five back vertebrae from the newly-discovered Australian dinosaur Savannasaurus elliottorum. Picture: Judy Elliott/Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural HistorySource:Supplied